If you’re a US adventure motorcycling fan, it’s been a year full of ups
and downs.
First, Speed Channel quit its Paris-Dakar coverage, instead relegating
it to the seldom-seen Outdoor Life Network, which cut the entire
two-week event down to two hours. Shameful, especially considering that
network does an excellent job providing daily Tour de France coverage.

To the good, we were thankful to see the Ewan McGregor-Charlie Boorman
Long Way Round motorcycle tour on television here, but the folks who put
out the DVD never bothered generating an American version, leaving those
U.S. motorcyclists desperate for something a little more erudite than, say,American Chopper to find a computer that could play a PAL encoded version.

Now, the series, which originally aired last fall/winter in the U.S. on the
Bravo Network, is being re-released in an extended version to U.K.
audiences.
Unfortunately, at least for the forseeable future, there are no
definite plans to release the extended version on any U.S. networks. Maybe
when the winter months finally settle in, we’ll have something to watch.

(This post originally appeared in the July 7, 2005, issue of the Hemmings eWeekly Newsletter.)